Page 46 of Redemption

“He can’t be trusted. Charles’s first priority is Charles.” Finn rests his chin on the top of my head. “Will you call Demid?”

“Yes.” We had a good working relationship until his daughter, Valeriya, turned up dead in an Irish harbor less than a year ago. Eric, my former fiancé, was the likely culprit since they were having an affair, and she was pregnant. The memory makes my stomach roll in protest. “He’ll take them in. I’m not certain what he’ll want in return.”

“Call, but make the call from outside. Somewhere out here or in the fields.”

“We’re not going to remove the bug?”

Finn chuckles. “What’s the good in that? They’ll put another in there, and we might not find it next time. We know the room is bugged. They can listen to us have sex and talk about skin creams and whether my black shirt matches my jeans.”

I smack his chest. “We’ve never had those conversations.”

“We do now.” A hint of a smile plays at the corners of his lips. “We’ll bore whoever is listening with innocuous day-to-day ramblings, and they’ll never see the knife we’re going to shove into their back.”

His arm stays around me while we amble toward the mansion again. “Kim and I ran into Jade today while we were out exploring.”

“Did you?” His voice has a wary tone I don’t expect.

“She seems lonely. We could befriend her, maybe get information from her.”

He grimaces. “There’s something off with her.”

“What do you mean?”

He stops walking and turns to face me again, his expression pinched with uncertainty. “You won’t believe me.”

Finn doesn’t lie to me, so the fact he thinks I won’t believe him explains the way he’s been acting since he returned to the room. Is his hesitation about how I’ll interpret the incident? “What happened?” I give him a beat to answer and then add, “Did she make a move on you or something?” Jealousy sours my stomach, an emotion I haven’t experienced in years.

He chuckles. “No, nothing like that.”

He must not have noted how Jade feasted on him rather than lunch when she first noticed him. But then when we met each other in the ruins, she was so shy and meek.

“I saw Pierre-Jacques slap her across the face.”

“What?” I clutch my heart, Kim’s warning about abuse rising to the forefront of my mind. “Kim said she heard he was abusive.” I try to catch his gaze. “Did you say anything?”

“They were in their bedroom. The door was cracked a bit.” Finn gives the width with his hands. “Him hitting her wasn’t what bothered me.”

“Him abusing his girlfriend isn’t a problem for you?” I cock an eyebrow, and annoyance spills out of me.

Despite Finn’s penchant for violence, I’ve never worried he’d take out his frustrations on me. Even when we were young and he was fighting for his life in The Cage, the minute his rage dissipated, it was like it had never been there at all. Now that he’s older, he’s mellowed. Though Finn calls it ‘getting smart’ about how and when he attacks.

“Wouldn’t be the first man I knew who controlled a woman with his fists.” When I open my mouth to protest, he holds up his hand. “I’m not saying it’s right.”

“So, you stepped in? Said something?”

“No, I—” He scratches the top of his head. “The fight might have been real, but the slap—I don’t think it was.”

“Did he hit her?” I cross my arms. What is Finn trying to say? The notion of Jade being abused stirs my protective instincts. My relationship with Eric was fraught with abuse—more psychological—but any way you examine it, she’s being hurt.

“Yes. He hit her. She fell to the ground.”

“He hit her that hard?”

“That’s not—” He groans. “You weren’t there. She saw me watching. She got in his face, as though she was challenging him. I think she was giving him a cue. She was very aware I was there.”

I glare at him. How can a man who is so smart not recognize this as a cry for help? “Did it occur to you that maybe she wanted you todo something? Maybe somebody would witness her suffering? Someone strong enough, tough enough to help her?” I managed to claw my way out of a relationship with Eric, but we continued to fall back into unhealthy patterns. Finn invading my life snapped my relationships with everyone in my life into focus.

He shakes his head. “That wasn’t the vibe.”

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